the stars that streak the sky
by Cerulean Pen
Summary: It's amazing and perfect and beautiful-and when Carly blinks, she discovers it's all a dream…/Or, Carly and Freddie make a few mistakes that they don't want to fix…Carly/Freddie, for Lovely Amelie.


stars that streak the sky

Summary: It's amazing and perfect and beautiful-and when Carly blinks, she discovers it's all a dream…/Or, Carly and Freddie make a few mistakes that they don't want to fix…Carly/Freddie, for Lovely Amelie.

English Angst/Romance Rated: T Chapters:1 Words: Carly S. & Freddie B.

**a/n: **This is written for Lovely Amelie, who has converted me to Creddie, and inspired me to write for iCarly again, after another dedication for her, a Carly-centric. It's also trying to sneak in a quiet portrayal of how much I love a boy named Sam, who doesn't l o v e m e b a c k .

Their legs are so tangled, Carly thinks that they'll become one, an interwoven mesh of sorrow and tears and broken. She's covered in sweat, so sticky, she's actually stuck to Freddie, to the point where she just wants to evaporate into the sheets like a melted ice cube. Hands explore, lips press firmly into collarbones, labored breathing that hurts so badly, she wants it m o r e.

"This is-"

"We're not doing this," Carly threatens, just as she drives her lips into Freddie's neck like a blood-crazed vampire, and there's the darkening of veins, and the constant heartbeat (whose is it?) Pillows muffled their words, but Carly swears that he whispers "I love you" somewhere deep inside her throat.

She's broken.

:::::

Carly disappears after that. Sometimes, Freddie gets little snippets of newspaper in the mail, but the return address is always blurred out by tears. He doesn't want to write back anyway, because Freddie knows that Carly is there, always there, but she won't come back.

Sam comes over-or, rather, Sam appears at his kitchen table, because Carly doesn't, and she's eating a wedge of chicken, with her feet on a chair. _Hey, Benson, _she says boldly, just like old times when they were Carly&Freddie&Sam on iCarly, and Freddie loses his mind without noticing. But somehow, they're against the wall, kissing, breathing each other's pain, and Freddie wants to stuff oxygen down his throat so he can scream for Carly. But maybe this is good enough-

_Right?_

:::::

Carly sends newspaper clippings about death to Freddie. She just longs for him to know that the world isn't perfect and pretty and colorful through his little video camera window, and when she's swept up in the little wrinkles of the universe, that there is Freddie. He skips the one on the countdown because after one is zero, and the two of them are zero zero zero.

She's in Paris now, looking up at the nighttime sky and wondering _what if Freddie is looking at the sky right now, just like I am? _There's a shooting star, one that doesn't just glide, but leaves a twinkling little tail of glitter that won't vanish. Carly waits for the pop and the fizzle of the gilded beauty to die, for the star to burn out and disappear into the inky depths of the solar system, where everything is cold and black and broken.

The star doesn't disappear.

:::::

The day Carly comes back to Seattle, it rains; not hard rain, but the misty, chilly kind of drizzle that only Seattle has to offer, and it's like a welcoming gift-we missed you, Carly. The concrete is covered with little chalk drawings, bright little flowers and rainbows, that are runny in the rain, but don't flood away just yet. There's enough blurred color for hope.

She drops her bags in some hotel room, and hails a cab to Freddie's apartment, praying praying praying-_remember me, won't you? Imadeamistakeforgiveme. We'll never forget what we started._

He's there, in bed, with Sam, and there's something in his eyes that remind her of decaying stars, that bring on a burst of flaming brilliance before they cool into _zero. _Carly just stands there with her mouth open, looking at him, in bed with her, possibly the most twisted, cliché-ending love story to ever be written. How can they not see her standing there, breaking into prettylittlesplinters?

"Carly…"

He remembers her name. (Of course he does, you idiot!) Sam stops, and for a moment, they're Carly but after that, they're betrayed&embarrassed&torn. "Go ahead," she spits icily, walking right out of Freddie's apartment, into the rain, where she shivers, and thinks about nights when she would just dance in the rain as it washed pain away from the world.

Carly doesn't know where she's going, but it's a dark place that smells strong of vodka and smoke and eyeliner, and when she sits down on one of the stools, she remembers chairs that spin, and looks up at the bar runner with tired, dark eyes.

"Rough day?" he asks, fixing something for her with his back turned, and Carly almost laughs, watching her own thin, spindly fingers rake through her hair, until it's a curtain over her face. (Maybe it's her fault for leaving, or maybe it's his fault for making her want to fly far away.)

"More like a rough life," Carly answers stonily, but with the slightest little giggle, because it's just so _funny_ that smart pretty perfect Carly Shay is sitting in the middle of a bar, because there's no Freddie to be seen. She remembers looking in a mirror once, and hating what she saw, the little rolls of fat and the stringy hair and the ugly cracks that spread through her foundation.

"This will help." He slides a glass over to her that's full of purple stuff that's too thin to be cough syrup, and too thick to be grape juice (she thinks of childhood) and too dangerous to be anything good. Carly looks at him, smiles, and leans back a moment to see the window, watching the stars die in the night.

She raises the glass to her lips.

:::::

"You still have feelings for Carly."

_Who wouldn't?_ Freddie watches Sam pace the living room of his apartment, only wearing a short pair of exercising shorts and a lacy bra that couldn't belong to Sam Puckett. "It's more then that," he replies, watching her fists tighten and her veins protrude through her neck, like that want to escape and strangle him. "She's-"

"She's better then me," Sam answers for him, grabbing her bag and slinging it over her back, and simply walks out of the apartment. Freddie tips his chair back and begins to laugh like this is all some big joke that will have a punch line in the end. He grabs a bottle of wine from the refrigerator, being saved for his cousin's wedding, and begins to drink.

:::::

Sam r u n s.

:::::

Carly is happy with her drunk self, as she parades over the countertop, sashaying to a rhythm only she can hear, and that one, still clear part of her mind is yelling _Freddie _to the pace of her heartbeat. People laugh and cheer and whistle, but Carly doesn't really hear them, she's just dancing for the hell of it, and screaming is going to come next.

A drunk Freddie Benson is as likely as a flying penguin, so Carly doesn't quite believe it when Freddie stumbles in, raising a near-empty bottle to Carly, with bleary eyes and all misshapen smiles. They dance on the countertop because they need something solid to rely on, and spinning like tops seems to punish gravity for taking things a p a r t.

Even after the bar closes and they're kicked out forever, Carly and Freddie dance in the drizzling rain, pointing out the shooting stars and waving at people who walk on the opposite sides of the asphalt. This feels amazingly new to Carly, as she spins without a care, without knowledge of what's in the mirror, or a photo album, or newspaper clippings. There's only Freddie and stars and-

The car that comes speeding by grinds her very soul into the concrete, with a noise that rips Freddie back into soberness, as he stands in a river of crimson blood, his breath shaky. No one ever told him that fairytales end this way, where the beautiful princess is _dead _and the handsome prince has made way too many mistakes to fix.

There's a tire track on her translucent cheek; Freddie kisses her, and leaves her body there, in Seattle, to let the rain wash her blood into the gutters along with those little chalk drawings that cover the concrete.

Freddie looks up.

:::::

the trail of glitter that the star left is gone.

:::::

zero.

**I personally thought I totally screwed up trying to write this-bangs head on keyboard-but I hope Lovely Amelie will drop by, because you are the total master at writing Creddie, and I hope everyone else enjoys. The part about the trail of glitter that shooting stars leave came from my sister, who told me that shooting stars don't die in the sky, they're reborn. Crazy? Yes. All right, please review! =)**


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